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Sensory issues maybe? Maybe not

Catlady31

Hello,

Can a child be distracted/upset by a buzzing sound that no one else can really hear whilst sitting still and quiet yet love noisey, busy play areas and shout and scream themselves. They will also refuse to go to pantos and shows because they dislike the crowded seating, noise from everyone's shouting next to them and the noisey show itself. They also dislike the noisey, crowded school cafeteria and smell of the food, seeing and hearing others eat.

At home, they seem to crave movement and will sit on the floor waching TV swaying sideways, rolling off the sofa and deliberately hitting the floor.  They will also deliberately run and drop to the ground sometimes at home and when out at the park with friends.  They can also be too loud when talking to friends or mum and dad yet hate talking and answering questions from people they don't know well and will go mute in some situations.

One minute telling professionals that my child is noise and crowd sensitive and then the next saying the opposite. I'm getting the feeling I'm not making any sense to them and I don't quite undersyad it myself.  Could it be that they are a sensory seeker and avoided depending on the setting maybe?

Parents

  • There's human-friendly sound such as natural acoustics out doors or in a well treated space and then there's non human-friendly sounds such as electrical wires buzzing, reverberations from cafeterias and other terrible structures which no thought or intention around acoustics went into. Now, your child might have the capacity to explain the physics of this to you once they're 18. But not yet. For now, trust that they are tapped into the natural order of the world quite well. 

    I would buy ear defenders and just bring them with you. You may be able to create a back pack for your child to carry about with things to help them 'shield' themselves from the world - sunglasses, ear defenders, etc. 

    The second problem is related to the first. That of not having defence mechanisms, and intaking everything intensely, with a vulnerability they cannot properly defend yet. So unknown (or sometimes known) humans can feel very intimate and there is something in us psychologically which is overwhelmed by the other-ness of others. Autistic children need to be afforded time to trust another to know how to navigate and respond. 

    Allow your child to be Shy. Introverted. Earning trust is valuable and we all feel rewarded when another feels we are worthy of theirs.

    Not only is the external world much... too much, but our internal world is chaotic and something we've yet to learn how to control. Sport which helped me become focused and able to control my physiology - anything which requires balance. Gymnastics, Judo, Karate, Yoga. Anything with helps with Self-Focus. Identifying various muscles and activating them properly. Much of our growing up is learning to grow into our selves and learning to assert boundaries for the world around. This chaos happens in the mind, too. When the mind is racing, the best fix is something focused for it to latch on to and learn, imagine or solve. 

Reply

  • There's human-friendly sound such as natural acoustics out doors or in a well treated space and then there's non human-friendly sounds such as electrical wires buzzing, reverberations from cafeterias and other terrible structures which no thought or intention around acoustics went into. Now, your child might have the capacity to explain the physics of this to you once they're 18. But not yet. For now, trust that they are tapped into the natural order of the world quite well. 

    I would buy ear defenders and just bring them with you. You may be able to create a back pack for your child to carry about with things to help them 'shield' themselves from the world - sunglasses, ear defenders, etc. 

    The second problem is related to the first. That of not having defence mechanisms, and intaking everything intensely, with a vulnerability they cannot properly defend yet. So unknown (or sometimes known) humans can feel very intimate and there is something in us psychologically which is overwhelmed by the other-ness of others. Autistic children need to be afforded time to trust another to know how to navigate and respond. 

    Allow your child to be Shy. Introverted. Earning trust is valuable and we all feel rewarded when another feels we are worthy of theirs.

    Not only is the external world much... too much, but our internal world is chaotic and something we've yet to learn how to control. Sport which helped me become focused and able to control my physiology - anything which requires balance. Gymnastics, Judo, Karate, Yoga. Anything with helps with Self-Focus. Identifying various muscles and activating them properly. Much of our growing up is learning to grow into our selves and learning to assert boundaries for the world around. This chaos happens in the mind, too. When the mind is racing, the best fix is something focused for it to latch on to and learn, imagine or solve. 

Children
  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    And most of us dislike crowd seating. Autistics can be like sponges (vulnerable, too open, everything is intimate and intense), picking up all these emotions and smells add that humans are wild cards - unpredictable. On top of which, anytime before the age of 30 we might not have the wisdom and maturity to understand non-autistic psychology and language and why we have difficulty with it.  It is far more reasonable to dislike a crowd, if one thinks enough about it. There are philosophies which talk about the madness of crowds and what kind of violence they're capable of.